Yogyakarta – Indonesian officials defended the earthquake relief operation under way in central Java, amid complaints from local residents that aid has been slow to arrive.
"The situation is getting better and better, especially in the area of distribution," said Major General Bambang Darmono, the coordinating officer on the ground for the national disaster management agency BAKORNAS. "Every area has been reached by the distribution effort," he told AFP.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the earthquake that rocked Indonesia's main island of Java at the weekend has risen to at least 5,846, the social affairs ministry said. As many as 200,000 were left homeless by Saturday's 6.3-magnitude quake on Indonesia's main island.
International humanitarian aid and foreign medical teams have begun pouring into the disaster zone, but desperate local residents have criticized the relief effort, saying the Jakarta government has been too slow to react.
Darmono rejected that claim, telling AFP: "I know there are a lot of people complaining, but it doesn't mean there is no activity. "We are still in an emergency phase, so we are still continuing with our efforts – delivering food, and also evacuating people if there are victims in the area," he said.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has urged local officials to work with regional and national authorities, as well as international aid agencies, to deliver aid to those in need as quickly as possible.
Another official with BAKORNAS, who gave his name as Tabrani, said officials were working hard to "optimize the distribution" of aid supplies. "The issue is not the food stuffs, but how we could distribute it in a quicker manner," he said.
Ibrahima Kone, a technical officer for the World Health Organization (WHO), said international aid agencies were still working to record a proper tally of the tonnes of aid coming into the area. "At the end of today, or tomorrow morning at most, we should have a better view of what we have received, and how we are going to dispatch it," he said.
"Usually, for two or three days after an emergency, it takes two or three days for the system to get ready to deal with this huge amount of aid." The United Nations on Tuesday gave a relatively upbeat assessment of the aid effort on the ground but admitted that problems remained.
"I think the situation is under control," said Elizabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN's humanitarian coordination office in Geneva. "So now the problem is logistics, rain, storage, congestion of airports – all the usual problems we meet when there is a disaster of this size."